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Damien Darhk
Damien Darhk was a mysterious, elusive, and dangerous figure. He first appeared in Titans #1 (March, 1999) and was created by Devin Grayson and Mark Buckingham. Villain Overview Damien is an enemy of the Titans responsible for reforming H.I.V.E. into a more cohesive terrorist organization, as opposed to being a generic robe-wearing cabal. He was instead a business savvy manipulator, glued to his cell phone. However, Darhk gained immorality after receiving blood from Deathstroke's ex-wife, Adeline Kane. He is killed by Vandal Savage. History Not much is known about Damien Darhk’s early life… actually, pretty much nothing at all. A boy genius, he developed quite a taste and a skill for technology, becoming an incredible hacker and programmer; his tactician’s mind did everything else, and Damien, albeit extremely young, became a notable criminal in the underground. Both FBI and CIA started monitoring this teenager crook, but Darhk’s skills were good enough to allow him to erase any sign of his passage, and nobody ever managed to connect him to his crimes. Damien Darhk was powerful, brilliant, dangerous and untouchable… exactly the kind of guy the criminal cartel H.I.V.E. (Hierarchy of International Vengeance and Eliminations) was looking for. H.I.V.E. was an unimportant cabal of men and women of power who wanted to raise to the next level and become a world-renowned terrorist group, but in order to do so they needed to reorganize the entire organization. Damien was contacted by the seven leaders of H.I.V.E. and was offered the task of reshaping the group into something the entire planet would have known and feared… exactly the position Darhk was looking for. The boy, who was barely in his twenties, became the second in command of Adeline Kane, one of the on-field commanders of H.I.V.E. and the ex-wife of mercenary Deathstroke. Using his knowledge of new technology, and inventing some new gadgets of his own, Darhk created a number of important connections that helped him reshape H.I.V.E., and in a couple of years the secret society of influential businessmen became a notorious terrorist organization, responsible for destabilizing a number of countries and governments all around the world. From behind the curtains, Darhk pulled all the strings, and albeit the authorities recognized him as the mind behind H.I.V.E.’s rebirth, there was still no evidence of his involvement with any criminal activity at all. As Darhk soon learnt, however, if he was indeed untouchable for the secret services or the police forces, there was a kind of authority not limited by national or international law: superheroes. He soon clashed with the group known as the Teen Titans (at the time known as the New Titans), an event that forced him to find new tools to play with in a game he still had to understand the rules of. He employed his contacts to hire mercenaries such as Deathstroke and his daughter Ravager to battle the Titans, and did his best to prevent the young heroes to foil the plans of H.I.V.E., not always with success. Darhk was always careful to stay hidden behind the curtains not to make himself known, but eventually he started losing a fortune thanks to the heroes’ efforts, and he eventually began losing the esteem and trust of his superiors inside H.I.V.E., something he couldn’t afford. Darhk’s grudge against the Titans found a good partner in Adeline Kane, who in the meanwhile had become the Mistress of H.I.V.E. and had started an all-out war against all superheroes, whom she considered responsible for the death of her children. Darhk chose to help the Mistress in her plan, but their plot backfired, as the immortal tyrant Vandal Savage intervened to take advantage of their work. A massive battle started between H.I.V.E., the New Titans and Savage’s Tartarus, a battle Damien couldn’t hide himself from. Clashing with the Titans, the young genius was stabbed by Lady Vic, a swordswoman from Tartarus; barely surviving the attack, he was then faced by Vandal Savage himself, who shot him to death. During the battle, however, Savage slit Adeline’s throat in order to use her blood (infused with Deathstroke’s healing factor) to create an army of immortals like himself: while Adeline was ultimately killed by Starfire under her own request, her blood managed to reach Damien’s body, so that the boy was revived, now with the healing powers of the deceased Mistress. With a brand new bunch of skills, Damien Darhk was ready to restart his work right where he had interrupted it. Arrowverse Damien Darhk appears in the TV series Arrow as the main antagonist of the fourth season. Category:DC Villains Category:Comic Book Villains Category:Criminals Category:Gangsters Category:Deceased Category:Green Arrow Villains Category:Martial Artists Category:Teen Titans Villains Category:Enigmatic Category:Fighters